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In this article, we critically discuss a Swedish hospital foodservice reform by puttingfoodservice in a historical and social context and analyzing a case, “the most flexiblepatient foodservice system in Sweden,” by using Bacchi’s what’s the problem representedto be (WPR) approach. We show how hospital foodservice governance in Sweden hasbecome more focused on the individual patient as a consumer. Our analysis points outhow in political protocols and related policy materials freedom of choice, flexibility,and efficiency were articulated as drivers of change. Freedom of choice was argued toenhance quality, increase food intake, diminish demand for special diets and lower costs.This can be seen as empowering patients, but also shifting part of the responsibility ofnutrition care and health over to individuals, whether they want it or not. Flexibilitywas seen as beneficial for patient logistics regarding medical treatment and argued toimprove allocation of staff resources. Inefficiency was a characteristic attributed tothe old system, while the reform was an opportunity to modernize and be more costefficient.The new organizational structures may lead to tensions between foodserviceand healthcare. The changes, system flexibility and patient freedom of choice, are salientwithin a broader neoliberal discourse.

Vi lever i det som har kallats postsanningens tidevarv - en tid då falska nyheter, faktaresistens och konspirationer präglar samhällsdebatten. Samtidigt krävs att starkare bevis för att kunskap ska erkännas som legitim. I denna spänning formas det som kallas en sanningskris. I Sanningskris - Det postfaktiska samhället och medielandskapets förändringar samlas forskare och skribenter från humaniora och samhällsvetenskap för att undersöka vad som egentligen står på spel. Här diskuteras allt från klimatförnekelse, museers kunskapsroll och abortmotståndets sanningsanspråk till mytavslöjanden på Tiktok och konspirationsteorier om socialtjänstens arbete. Boken erbjuder inga enkla svar - men den öppnar upp för en djupare förståelse av hur kampen om kunskap och sanning formar vår samtid. 

This paper problematises ideological assumptions about journalism’s epistemic authority among Swedish media professionals in relation to notions of post-truth. The study is based on qualitative interviews with journalists who are active in the Swedish news industry. The concept of discursive logics is applied to showcase how journalism is understood and experienced by journalists themselves during an alleged truth crisis. This paper analyses how journalistic practices and ideals are perceived to be disrupted by an ongoing truth crisis and how such practices are envisioned in the future. This paper identifies two major discursive logics in which these disruptions are manifested. The journalists conceived of new techno-political infrastructures in the media as a horrific fantasy threatening their work practices. The second logic is the beatific fantasy of truth-seeking journalism in current times. Post-truth represents a threat against journalism in a double-edged way: first by creating mistrust in established media, and second because, when attempting to counteract fake news through fact checking, the journalist is instead positioned as an activist or a debater.

Through interviews with 16 social workers, drawing on the concept of “willful subjects”, the aim of this paper is to analyze how social workers working in Swedish municipal social services make sense of, adapt, and/or challenge routine questions about intimate partner violence, and how such routines affect their professional role and agency. We found that participants renegotiated standardized ways of asking by stressing the need to use such questionnaires with care, and stating that the individual judgement and agency of the social worker is paramount. The participants also renegotiated the purpose of asking; while their routine questions about IPV seldom led to a disclosure of ongoing exposure to violence, social workers considered it important to ask because it “opens the door” and signals the possibility of receiving help in the future. We argue that social workers are not necessarily stripped of agency when following standardized protocols and routines, despite increasing efforts to include controlling mechanisms in their everyday practice. However, our results also show that social workers’ legal obligation to report to child protection services, if there are children in the household, limits their room for discretion and how the routine questions about violence are asked and perceived by clients.

This paper examines the complexities surrounding feminist articulations diverg-ing from the established gender equality policies in Sweden, particularly concern-ing the valorization of wage labor as the cornerstone of women’s emancipation. Drawing on feminist-Marxist theories of social reproduction, it analyzes instances of women’s resistance to the hegemonic discourse of full-time wage labor, focus-ing on three empirical examples: the Haro organization advocating for the recogni-tion of unpaid domestic labor, the 2005 daycare debate ignited by Nina Björk, and the discourse of ‘mama-influencers’ typified by UnderbaraClara. Through the lens of boundary struggles and emotional labor, this study challenges the binary divi-sion between productive and reproductive work, making visible alternative femi-nist agendas centered on reducing wage labor and revaluing reproductive work. By reinterpreting women’s narratives within a feminist social reproduction theory framework, this paper aims to show how a feminist-Marxist analysis can broaden the scope of mainstream gender equality discourse. 

The last decades have witnessed a widespread rise in populist, right-wing, anti-gender movements targeting gender-equality politics and gender studies throughout Europe. While the situation for Swedish gender studies remains relatively stable, with institutionalized gender departments, this paper focuses on how Swedish gender studies scholars conceive of their situation and the status of gender studies in the current era. Through an interview study drawing on the concept of “affective atmosphere”, the article explores how the anti-gender discourse induces a precarious situation that produces a sense of apocalypse and a crisis of hope for gender studies. As such, the anti-gender discourse calls upon scholars to react and engage. In the interviews, the future of gender studies was discussed as being at risk, while at the same time the interviewees described gender studies as an academic success story. However, to avoid falling into the trap of being either too optimistic or too pessimistic about the current state of the art, the authors argue that the knowledge production of gender studies as such can be reconfigured as a site for resistance, for detecting openings and creating possible pathways into the future that extend beyond the hegemonic neoliberal, authoritarian one.